A little rant on blog themes and website design in general
In Web design and Web development there was one important saying about navigation and interface design that was pounded into my brain by every teacher: Users are stupid.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve used a computer, if the UI is unclear the user gets annoyed and confused. They may even close the site. Websites were originally text-only. They were digital books where the links were pages and a menu was the table of content. There was almost no focus in formatting and design during the early days of the internet.
Over time website became more visual. Instead of books their format became more newspaper and magazine-like, but one aspect still remained the same. No matter what, hyperlinks had to be instantly recognizable and easily accessible to allow a user to navigate through different pages with ease. This means that webpage in its simplest form needs clear and concise names for each link.
This is where I get annoyed. Going through tumblr I see a bunch of themes that are minimalist in nature. Navigation links to major areas like ‘Home’ or ‘Contact’ are hidden until clicking or rolling over a JS/JQuery enabled element, and a lot of times the next page and previous page links are also hidden or replaced with a « and ». I’m okay with the arrows as it clearly implies going forward/moving back. Its the hidden ones that I have a problem with.
I love minimalist web designs because of how clean and uncluttered it looks. However there is a point where things can be too minimalist. Tumblr is often times twitter with more words. People consume posts quickly and move on and because of this the next page and previous page buttons matter a lot. But the problem is I’ve seen a lot of sites where you don’t really now where the next and back button are. There was one site where the next button was a thin grey bar that expanded from around 3 pixels to around 10 pixels when you roll over it. The problem there was that there was no indication that it was the next button other than the rollover. No text that said next, no arrows pointing », nothing. Just a grey bar that looked like it was part of the menu dropdown.
The big problem here is that you have to work and actively search for it. In a time where information is consumed in seconds, searching for the next page button impedes the user in his/her consumption. It ultimately leads to frustration, annoyance, and often times going to another site.
So please, for the sake of my consumption of your information, please, for the love of god clearly label your navigation links.
